Serious questions remain for Andrew Mitchell on aid to Rwanda

A month of feverish speculation about one of Andrew Mitchell’s first actions as Chief Whip – the infamous incident at Downing Street – eventually led to his decision to resign the post.

Yet there has been much less focus on one of his final actions as Secretary of State for International Development – despite far more serious ramifications. As he prepared to leave his post in the Department for International Development, Mr Mitchell ended a freeze on aid to Rwanda. As a result, £16m was granted to the country in a move which left the UK internationally isolated.

While the move received some coverage – including by the New Statesmanhere, it did not receive widespread coverage.

It reversed a previous decision made by Andrew Mitchell, in common with allies in the European Union and beyond, following intensification of fighting in Eastern Congo - fighting in which the M23 rebel group played a substantial role.

It is not clear why the UK government made the decision to reinstate aid on the day Mitchell left the department, why it made the decision alone and what, if any, consultation took place with European Union countries who, increasingly, co-ordinate policies and payments with the UK government.

It is also a puzzle that any Secretary of State should make such a sensitive decision on his last day in the job, since the issue was not especially time sensitive and could have been considered, with appropriate discussion with allies, by his successor.

The decision became more sensitive still within a month. A Reuters news report said that concerns have been set out by UN experts in a report due out in November that Rwanda’s defence chief is effectively leading a rebel group against its neighbour’s Government. The M23 rebels have been fighting government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo for much of the year, a key factor in the initial suspension of aid in July. Rwanda has strongly denied the suggestions.

Andrew Mitchell’s actions in restoring aid moved against the tide of international opinion and left Britain isolated.

The question is: why?

In a parliamentary answer last month, the government confirmed they remain “very concerned by continuing reports of Rwandan support for the M23 rebels, by the humanitarian situation, and by reports that the M23 rebels are setting up a parallel administration, and are committing human rights abuses.”

Asked by Cardiff West Labour MP Kevin Brennan why aid was restored despite those concerns, the Prime Minister said: “We should be very frank and firm with President Kagame and the Rwandan regime that we do not accept that they should be supporting militias in the Congo or elsewhere. I have raised that issue personally with the President, but I continue to believe that investing in Rwanda’s success, as one of those countries in Africa that is showing that the cycle of poverty can be broken and that conditions for its people can be improved, is something we are right to do.”

This response does not sit well with the decision to suspend aid in July.

Certainly, the Foreign Office is sensitive to continued concern on the matter. Minister Hugo Swire, speaking in a debate on the Democratic Republic of Congo on 23 October said in reponse to me pressing him on the matter:

The decision to disburse £8m of general budget support while reprogramming the remaining £8 million to targeted programmes on education and food security took account of the fact that withholding the money would impact on the very people we aim to help. By reprogramming some of the general budget support, we signalled our continuing concern about Rwanda’s actions in eastern DRC.

I am sure that the honourable gentleman was not trying to make some kind of cheap political point about the issue. The point is that we are committed to helping the poorest people in the world and we believe that there are people in Rwanda who are still deserving of our support. The decision to continue that support was taken across Government.

Andrew Mitchell’s decision to reinstate aid amended the package to Rwanda: part of the aid was “reprogrammed” to targeted programmes. This indicates worries that the funding could have been use inappropriately had a simple reinstatement of aid been made.

It is very welcome that Andrew Mitchell will be giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development on 8 November on his decision to reinstate aid to Rwanda. Substantial questions remain for him to answer.

Ian Lucas is Shadow Minister for Africa and the Middle East and the Labour MP for Wrexham

Hannan Fodder: This week, Daniel Hannan gets his excuses in early

Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy...

When I started this column, there were some nay-sayers talking Britain down by doubting that I was seriously going to write about Daniel Hannan every week. Surely no one could be that obsessed with the activities of one obscure MEP? And surely no politician could say enough ludicrous things to be worthy of such an obsession?

They were wrong, on both counts. Daniel and I are as one on this: Leave and Remain, working hand in glove to deliver on our shared national mission. There’s a lesson there for my fellow Remoaners, I’m sure.

Anyway. It’s week three, and just as I was worrying what I might write this week, Dan has ridden to the rescue by writing not one but two columns making the same argument – using, indeed, many of the exact same phrases (“not a club, but a protection racket”). Like all the most effective political campaigns, Dan has a message of the week.

First up, on Monday, there was this headline, in the conservative American journal, the Washington Examiner:

“We will get a good deal – because rational self-interest will overcome the Eurocrats’ fury”

The message of the two columns is straightforward: cooler heads will prevail. Britain wants an amicable separation. The EU needs Britain’s military strength and budget contributions, and both sides want to keep the single market intact.

The Con Home piece makes the further argument that it’s only the Eurocrats who want to be hardline about this. National governments – who have to answer to actual electorates – will be more willing to negotiate.

And so, for all the bluster now, Theresa May and Donald Tusk will be skipping through a meadow, arm in arm, before the year is out.

Before we go any further, I have a confession: I found myself nodding along with some of this. Yes, of course it’s in nobody’s interests to create unnecessary enmity between Britain and the continent. Of course no one will want to crash the economy. Of course.

I’ve been told by friends on the centre-right that Hannan has a compelling, faintly hypnotic quality when he speaks and, in retrospect, this brief moment of finding myself half-agreeing with him scares the living shit out of me. So from this point on, I’d like everyone to keep an eye on me in case I start going weird, and to give me a sharp whack round the back of the head if you ever catch me starting a tweet with the word, “Friends-”.

Anyway. Shortly after reading things, reality began to dawn for me in a way it apparently hasn’t for Daniel Hannan, and I began cataloguing the ways in which his argument is stupid.

Problem number one: Remarkably for a man who’s been in the European Parliament for nearly two decades, he’s misunderstood the EU. He notes that “deeper integration can be more like a religious dogma than a political creed”, but entirely misses the reason for this. For many Europeans, especially those from countries which didn’t have as much fun in the Second World War as Britain did, the EU, for all its myriad flaws, is something to which they feel an emotional attachment: not their country, but not something entirely separate from it either.

Consequently, it’s neither a club, nor a “protection racket”: it’s more akin to a family. A rational and sensible Brexit will be difficult for the exact same reasons that so few divorcing couples rationally agree not to bother wasting money on lawyers: because the very act of leaving feels like a betrayal.

Problem number two: even if everyone was to negotiate purely in terms of rational interest, our interests are not the same. The over-riding goal of German policy for decades has been to hold the EU together, even if that creates other problems. (Exhibit A: Greece.) So there’s at least a chance that the German leadership will genuinely see deterring more departures as more important than mutual prosperity or a good relationship with Britain.

And France, whose presidential candidates are lining up to give Britain a kicking, is mysteriously not mentioned anywhere in either of Daniel’s columns, presumably because doing so would undermine his argument.

So – the list of priorities Hannan describes may look rational from a British perspective. Unfortunately, though, the people on the other side of the negotiating table won’t have a British perspective.

Problem number three is this line from the Con Home piece:

“Might it truly be more interested in deterring states from leaving than in promoting the welfare of its peoples? If so, there surely can be no further doubt that we were right to opt out.”

I could go on, about how there’s no reason to think that Daniel’s relatively gentle vision of Brexit is shared by Nigel Farage, UKIP, or a significant number of those who voted Leave. Or about the polls which show that, far from the EU’s response to the referendum pushing more European nations towards the door, support for the union has actually spiked since the referendum – that Britain has become not a beacon of hope but a cautionary tale.

But I’m running out of words, and there’ll be other chances to explore such things. So instead I’m going to end on this:

Hannan’s argument – that only an irrational Europe would not deliver a good Brexit – is remarkably, parodically self-serving. It allows him to believe that, if Brexit goes horribly wrong, well, it must all be the fault of those inflexible Eurocrats, mustn’t it? It can’t possibly be because Brexit was a bad idea in the first place, or because liberal Leavers used nasty, populist ones to achieve their goals.

Read today, there are elements of Hannan’s columns that are compelling, even persuasive. From the perspective of 2020, I fear, they might simply read like one long explanation of why nothing that has happened since will have been his fault.

Jonn Elledge is the editor of the New Statesman's sister site CityMetric. He is on Twitter, far too much, as @JonnElledge.